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Betraying D.C.'s Children

By

William McGurn

Updated July 24, 2003 3:08 p.m. ET

Go ahead and try to explain to Janet Butler why a voucher won't make a dime's worth of difference in the life of a District of Columbia schoolchild. But you'd best be prepared when she pulls out a pretty potent Exhibit A: her daughter.

Today 17-year-old Noree'na Jazzmine Dowtin is headed off to college, and she speaks excitedly about her dreams of becoming a doctor -- a gynecologist/obstetrician, to be precise. And while teenage daughters and their mothers famously disagree, on this issue this mother and daughter see...